


Taste the Rainbow

by pprfaith



Series: Wishlist 2015 [10]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bad coping mechanisms, Community: wishlist_fic, F/F, F/M, Female Tony Stark, Fluffy, Future Fic, Genderswap, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Lady Loki, Mental Health problems, Not Beta Read, Prompt Fic, Rule 63, Shapeshifting, Soulmates, Synesthesia, and a bit cracky, schmoopy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 06:08:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5446034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Toni doesn't believe in soulmates, thanks a lot. It's bullshit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taste the Rainbow

**Author's Note:**

> For _vaguepositivity_ who asked for Lady Loki/Toni in a verse where you identify your soulmate by taste. With added synesthesia.
> 
> Good god, talk about complicated plots. But I did my best because complicated or not, that prompt was _brilliant_.

+

Soulmates are bullshit.

There, Toni said it. 

Soulmates are a bullshit arbitrary concept based on something as subjective as taste and really, what the hell? His name tastes like kiwi, so I’m gonna spend the rest of my life with him?

No way, José.

When Toni was a kid, her mom read her fairy tales and in one of them, people didn’t find their soulmates by taste, but by sight. They called it love at first sight and really, that’s not even an inch more ridiculous than the taste thing. 

And it’s a _condition_ , too. 

It’s not like normal words have a taste. Only names. Names of people. They have a taste. But they shouldn’t have. That is a condition and it’s called synesthesia, not destiny. 

You know how Toni knows that? Because Toni doesn’t just taste names, she also sees mathematical formulas. And that’s the exact same thing, except one gets thousands of books and movies devoted to is and the other makes her a freak. 

Go figure. 

So yeah, soulmates are bullshit. 

Fight her. 

+

For a while, Toni thinks she’s found a kindred spirit in Pepper, who tastes like, you guessed it, red pepper, takes shit from no-one and doesn’t need a soulmate to make her more than she is. 

They work side by side, sharp heels and sharper tongues and when anyone tells them they should spend more time looking for their other halves and less playing in a man’s sandbox, they get lawsuits for flipping people off. 

Toni could grow old like this, with Pep by her side, fuck the system, fuck everything, just them and the bots and beautiful, beautiful formulas scrawling themselves into midair in the most vibrant colors Toni has ever seen.

And then Mr. Hogan flirts with Pep, smiles at her in the rearview mirror and says, “Call me Happy,” and that’s that. 

Pepper’s perfect love tastes like pineapples. 

And Toni’s alone again.

+

It’s not even reliable. It’s not that you only taste a single name in your entire life. Or like every name tastes the same.

Every person’s name has its own taste. 

Pepper tastes like pepper and Happy like snow and Rhodey like whiskey. To Toni.

To Pepper, Happy tastes like pineapple, Rhodey like strawberries and Toni like tonic water.

If you know three people called Chris and you say the name three time, thinking of a different Chris each time, you’ll have three tastes in your mouth. 

It’s confusing and a mess and really weird when Toni is yelling in someone’s face and their name comes up and suddenly she tastes chocolate. 

So it’s stupid and subjective and some universal joke because people are constantly running around, gumming on names because they taste good and they don’t feel idiotic at all, no Ma’am, because it’s about true love!

“You make it sound like it’s total humbug,” Rhodey complains, half drunk, sprawled across a sofa that cost more than he makes in a year. “There’s logic to it.”

Oh, yeah. Because the tastes are weak, usually, getting stronger the more you’re emotionally invested in a person. Supposedly, nothing tastes as strongly as your soulmate. 

And supposedly, you and your soulmate taste the same to each other. 

Which is why there’s still Speed Dating events where people do nothing but walk up to each other, say each other’s names and then what they taste like. 

“Hello Sarah, you taste like freshly cut grass.”

“It’s arbitrary,” Toni argues because just because she calls a taste ‘lemon’ that doesn’t mean it’s the same as what another person calls ‘lemon’. They could experience two completely different tastes, call it lemon and spend the rest of their lives miserable with each other because they think they’re soulmates when they really, really hate each other. 

+

Worse. They could be like Howard and Maria and actually _be_ soulmates and still hate each other. 

+

At sleepovers, girls like to read name books out loud to each other, trying for the miniscule hint a generic name without a person attached to it carries. 

They sway over all kinds of stupid, hippie names, decide their soulmate is called Shevan and just about die for the next ten years when no Shevan comes walking in. 

Toni does it only once, after her breakup with Ty. Sits in her lab, drunk off her ass, and mouths two hundred plus pages of names to herself. 

All of them taste like ashes. 

+

Ty.

Ty.

Ty is the only time she tries, the only time she thinks, maybe, maybe. 

Ty tastes like cotton in her mouth and she tells him, between kisses in his dorm room, tells him, “Cotton, cotton, fuck, that’s weird, you taste like cotton.”

And he says, “You, too.”

And she’s dumb enough, lonely enough, stupid enough to believe him. 

She said it first, she’s a good lay, has more money than god and less sense than that same god gives inanimate objects and she believes that she found her soulmate. 

It takes six months for him to clear that up, and when he does, it’s full of spite and humiliation. Really, Toni? You believed that? Come on, what would I do with someone like you for a soulmate?

Someone like her. 

A train wreck, a freak, a broken thing, a cynic genius fuckup of a human being. 

What indeed.

+

So yeah. Toni is so over that whole soulmate bullshit by the time she hits thirty, it’s not even funny. 

It’s bullshit.

Fight her. 

She starts calling people by increasingly annoying nicknames just to void their names, and when those nicknames start to develop a taste, she switches them up and up and up. 

Her days are spent in her lab, where she can live out her other kind of synesthesia, the kind that actually makes sense: numbers and equations and brilliance and her nights are wasted on booze and others like her, who have no use for True Love, fuck that. 

+

And then the team. 

Natasha tastes like blood and Steve like vanilla – of course he fucking does. Clint like cherry syrup, Bruce like lettuce, of all things and Coulson like licking a steel pipe. Fury tastes like licorice because who likes licorice and Thor like sticking your tongue in a socket, all electricity and ozone. 

Toni could get off on that taste and calls him Pointbreak, Hammertime, Shakespeare in the Park, anything, anything, but his name.

All of them, anything but their names. 

+

It’s interesting and endlessly frustrating to find out the rest of the universe, or at least the rest of the Nine Realms buys into the whole bullshit Taste The Love shtick, too.

Toni had such high hopes.

+

Loki tastes like almonds, strong enough to fill her entire mouth, to make her gag with it, cloying and bitter and sharp. 

She takes to keeping booze at hand whenever he pops up in NYC, just so she can wash down the taste of him when he goes about poking the Avengers with a stick again. 

+

They fuck. 

Toni has no idea why, or how, or even when it starts, but at some point between the Chitauri invasion and now, she ends up in bed with Loki. 

Who definitely deserves the title ‘god’, even if he’s a dick. 

Steve and Clint disapprove, Natasha looks a bit fascinated and Thor is absolutely convinced that Loki is on his way to being a white hat again.

Like anyone with a brain as clever and a tongue as sharp as Loki can ever truly be a good guy. The sex is truly spectacular, though, and if Toni cared what other people thought, she’d have locked herself away in her lab never to come out again years ago. 

Decent sex is worth a few disapproving frowns, believe it. 

And that’s all it’s is, casual, amazing sex between consenting adults, indulged in when they’re not currently fighting on opposite sides, with a whole lot of snark and banter mixed in. 

The random gender switches Loki goes through, depending on mood, don’t hurt either.

It’s good. 

It’s fine. 

It means nothing.

+

It could, though, is the thing. 

Because when they’re not having sex, they end up lying in bed for hours, talking about quantum physics and binging shitty scifi series on Netflix – Loki’s guilty pleasure, Toni is sworn to silence. 

They laugh. 

And sometimes, when they feel like it, they get dressed, scar Clint mentally and make their way down into the labs, where the fuck about with the space time continuum and the edges of human understanding.

On one such occasion, Loki leans against one of the holo-tables, dressed in her own stiletto heels and a pair of Toni’s greasy jeans, along with a faded band-shirt. Instead of horrible, she looks unfairly hot, hair spilling over one shoulder as she studies a design Toni is thinking of shooting off to Pepper for production. It’s an entirely new kind of engine, no combustion at all, and if it works out…

Loki hums under her breath as she fiddles with equations and Toni doesn’t pay much attention to her, going over the math herself again, flicking numbers and figures around the room with her fingers. 

“Stark?” Loki eventually drawls and Toni stops, frowning, because there goes her flow. 

“Yeah?”

“You do realize that your holograms are not currently on, don’t you?”

Something cold settles in Toni’s gut. “JARVIS?”

“Indeed, sir. Holograms at your current station not engaged.”

Shit. “Why not?”

“You initiated privacy mode upon entering.”

Privacy mode. Meaning tinted windows and locks on all doors, so Clint would leave them alone. Also meaning she’s down here _alone_ usually, and has no need for shiny holograms to double her vision. 

“Fuck.”

With something like trepidation crawling down her spine, Toni turns to face the god of mischief, who is watching her with eerie stillness. There’s no smirk of her face, or derision, which is… weird. 

Because Toni’s synesthesia is not normal and people call her crazy at best and broken at worst when they discover her pawing at thin air, muttering formulas under her breath. 

But Loki… doesn’t. 

Loki just leans one ample hip against the table and asks, “What do you see?”

Automatically, Toni’s gaze flicks to where the beautiful swirl of color and code has faded along with her concentration. “Nothing,” she snaps and it’s the truth. 

Loki’s lips tick up into something sharp. “Please. Try that on someone else. What do you see?”

“I told you, nothing. Or at least, nothing that’s any of your business.”

A laugh, all mocking and sultry and Toni kind of wants to punch the bitch. 

“I didn’t think the great Iron Woman was so cowardly,” Loki goads and damn her, it works.

“People don’t get it. So I don’t talk about it. It saves me from having to break a lot of faces. End of story. Now can we – “

“No. What do you see?”

Toni is going to blame being sex-mellow on why she gives in with only that and a hard eye roll. “Formulas. I see formulas. It’s another form of synesthesia, it’s not contagious, I don’t want to talk about it, yes, that’s why I invented the hologram technology, no, I don’t care what you think about that. Does that cover all your bases?”

She expects a snappy comeback, or an insult, or general smarminess in response to something that is so obviously a chink in her armor, but all she gets is Loki waving one hand in the air between them, a strange flick to her wrist and, momentarily, Toni sees something flare bright gold. 

She’s still blinking away the after image when the god of lies shrugs. “It’s spellwork, for me,” she admits, easy as breathing. But then, Toni’s already taken the deadly plunge here. Everything else is easy now. 

And then her words register and Toni… Toni legit stops breathing for a moment, because did she just say… “You’ve got it, too?”

Eyeroll. _Obviously, keep up._

And that’s… that’s… insanely hot, actually. 

+

“I admit, I am surprised to see Loki so relaxed around you, Woman of Iron,” Thor proclaims, at half past nine in the morning, before Toni had even a drop of caffeine. This is why Natasha is her favorite, not him.

“What?”

“My brother,” the god chides, a poptart in each hand. “He is more himself around you than he has been in centuries. I would thank you, for putting him so at ease, if I did not know he would strangle me for it.”

What?

Toni holds up a finger, _wait_ , makes herself a cup of black, black coffee, throws it back like a shot and then blinks lazily as the caffeine permeates her system. Once she feels her brain come online, she rewinds the conversation. 

“What in god’s name makes you think Loki is relaxed around me? We fuck, we snark, we blow shit up. That’s all we do.”

“Ah,” Thor corrects, not the least bit put off, “but you do it while my brother is, in fact, my sister, do you not?”

What?

“You mean that’s not normal behavior?” She just figured, you know, shapeshifter, if you’ve got it, flaunt it. And it doesn’t hurt that Toni is more partial to inside plumbing than out. 

Thor’s happy expression drops into a solemn one and oh, oh. “I am afraid such behavior is frowned up in much of Asgard. Loki has not let him rob him of his enjoyment of his other form, but usually, he keeps it behind closed doors. To see him do it in the tower is heartening.” 

Huh. Okay. 

+

Loki sticks around for entire weeks, sometimes, stealing Bruce’s herbal tea blends, antagonizing Clint, talking shop with Natasha and scandalizing Steve by fucking Toni in public areas. 

He stays a she for most of it.

+

And obviously, Toni goes stupid over it. 

A little attention, a casual fling, a bit of acceptance, a few kind words from outsiders and bam, Toni’s IQ drops into the double digits. 

The thing is, though, that it’s _good_. 

The joking, the hanging out, the not having to hide the synesthesia, the ability to be cynic at someone without them taking offence. The sex, too, but that’s not even all of it anymore and that should have been Toni’s first clue. 

But, like she said, stupid. 

So, one night, after a rousing round of acrobatic lesbian sex, Toni rolls over in bed and asks, “What do I taste like?”

And Loki, all casual and uncaring, licks a broad stripe up Toni’s sternum, all the way to the reactor and answers, “Poison.”

Of course. 

+

Soulmates are fucking bullshit. 

+

Soulmates are fucking bullshit because it’s an arbitrary notion, it’s a subjective process, it’s completely fucking random, it’s a _condition_ and people lie about it to humiliate you, they go stupid over it, and they ruin their lives over it and it’s bullshit. 

And if anyone has to be Toni’s soulmate, then shouldn’t it be the person who is actually, literally, her perfect fucking match in every way. They even have the same kind of synesthesia and what are the odds on that?

So why…

It’s all bullshit. 

+

She _thinks_ she does a fairly decent job of hiding the fact that she half wants to rip out her arc reactor just to be done with it and also murder everyone around her, but apparently not. 

Because _Loki_ of all people asks her what’s wrong.

Well, there goes the afterglow. 

“Nothing,” she bites, too sharply to be inconspicuous. 

Loki, levering herself up on one elbow, glowers. “Tell me,” she demands and Toni wants to punch. Her. 

Since that would end with her in traction, at best, she rolls off the bed and grabs her discarded jeans, slipping into the shirt on her way to the door. “None of your business,” she declares over her shoulder as she goes.

“I rather think-“ 

She doesn’t let the god finish. “Yeah, well, don’t. We’re fucking. That’s all we do. Don’t start getting clingy now.”

Wow. That didn’t sound bitter at all. 

Before her mouth can betray her any more, Toni flees.

+

During their next video conference call, Pepper wears a necklace with a tiny, diamond-studded pineapple on it. Toni reduces three board members to tears. 

+

A week later – Loki hasn’t been around, Toni doesn’t care – Steve overhears a conversation over what to do with all the crap of Howard’s left at the old mansion. Toni doesn’t want it anywhere near her tower, Pepper thinks some of those things would make a nice exhibition for guided tours, and what about the art.

“Do what you want, Pep, or get me some matches. I don’t care,” she grumbles and of course, that’s the exact moment Captain Goddamn America swoops in and starts his usual tirade about respecting Howard, and her parents’ legacy.

Toni rounds on him, ignores the way Pepper is probably wind-milling behind her back in an attempt to get Rogers to _stop_ , and she snaps. “Stop talking about Howard like you knew him, just because you ran into each other a few times during your lab rat days, Rogers!”

“Howard was-“

“Howard was an asshole, a raging alcoholic and a waste of a human being. He was vicious, he was too proud, and he didn’t give a fuck about anything he didn’t build himself, which, I guess, explains why he liked you so much. His precious perfect soldier.”

That gives the man pause. For approximately five seconds. “I’m sure he loved you and your mother,” he finally answers, though more quietly. 

Huh. Maybe some of that was hurtful enough to actually penetrate. Or maybe it’s the tears that seem, for some inexplicable reason, to be filling Toni’s eyes. What the hell?

“One time when they were throwing fine china at each other,” she informs him, her voice suddenly quiet. Out of the corner of her eye, she can make out Pepper dropping her arms. “He told my mother that if he had to spend the rest of his life with someone, he would have preferred a robot he designed himself, rather than a flawed human soulmate, because at least a machine wouldn’t be such a mess.”

She turns to her CEO. “Seriously, set the shit on fire. I don’t care.”

And walks out. 

+

Apparently, the news that Toni has finally had her nervous breakdown makes the rounds rather quickly. By noon, Bruce has left a batch of soothing tea with instructions at the door of her lab, along with an XXL-sized bar of her favorite chocolate, Clint has sent her two dozen e-mails with funny cat videos and everyone else has studiously left her alone. 

Wonderful.

Peace and quiet.

Space to work. 

No-one nattering on about the correlation between magic and science and inferior human brains. 

It’s perfect.

By six am she’s ready to gouge her eyes out if she has to stare at any more formulas and wonder if Loki sees different colors, too, so she changes and goes out. 

Finds a party, gets shitfaced, picks up some pretty young thing who claims that everyone tastes like expensive champagne to her and fucks her in the back of the limo. 

Stumbles home in the wee hours, faceplants into bed and falls asleep with the knowledge that soulmates are bullshit and she doesn’t need one anyway.

Howard was right. The things she built herself are far better than any stupid, pre-destined matchie-match soulmate could ever be. Good old dad, right at last. 

+

She gets two weeks of happily – ha – losing herself in old habits with the occasional rant on arbitrary notions of eternal love and romanticized medical conditions, before it all goes to hell. 

Or, well. 

Loki appears. 

There is no other way to put it, because one second Toni is blearily trying to get the grit out of her eyes enough to check the time and decide whether or not she can sleep a few more weeks, and the next, there is an irate, still female god standing in the middle of her bedroom. 

“Toni,” she greets and she sounds way, way too dangerous for this time of day. Whatever that may be. 

“Hey there, Reindeer Games. Too tired to fuck. Come back some other time.” She waves, flops down into her pillows and closes her eyes. 

Maybe Loki will take the hint and her unfairly gorgeous self and go away. 

“I wondered, at first, what had gotten into you,” she says instead and Toni _hates_. “But while you are quite a bit cleverer than most humans, you are really not as subtle as you might like to think.”

“Fuck off.” She has no idea.

“No. What do I taste like to you, Antonia?”

Okay, so maybe she has some idea of what’s up. “Ass. Now fuck off.”

A second later, there is a god sitting on Toni’s stomach, holding her down. “Tell me.”

“No.”

“Tell me. It’s not poison, is it?”

“Brilliant deduction, Sherlock. Now get the fuck off me.”

“Tell me.”

“No.”

“Tell me.”

“I will have JARVIS activate the security protocols. He will shoot you.”

“Tell me, Toni, and if it’s not what I think it is, I will walk out that door and never return.”

For a moment, Toni’s heart stops. Never seeing Loki again is… exactly what she wants. Right.

“Almonds,” she spits, turns her face to the side, doesn’t want to see Loki’s sneer when she realizes how much she and Toni are not compatible. Toni doesn’t have a soulmate. She’s always known that. 

But Loki just sighs, a gusty, heavy thing, and instead of leaping off Toni and out the door, she actually lies down on top of her so they’re basically nose to nose. Toni keeps stubbornly staring at the wall. 

“There is a poison, in some worlds, that is made of the seeds of apples. I think you call it cyanide? It’s not as undetectable as most, which is why I find it fairly useless. The taste is bitter and nutty. I researched it after your childish fit, to see if there was another way one might describe that taste.”

“What’d you do that for?” Toni grumbles, half hoping for a certain answer, but dreading it all the same. She knows, of course she knows, what cyanide tastes like. And it suddenly all makes sense, but she can’t believe it. It’s too easy. 

“Because in a thousand years, I have never found anyone who _fit me_ quite the way you do, and I was sure that you were mine. What does cyanide taste like, Toni?”

She digs her bony chin into the cover of the arc reactor and patiently, for once, waits for Toni to get with the program.

She waits long enough for Toni to turn her head, lick her lips and very carefully say, “Almonds.”

There’s something wrong with her arc reactor, she thinks, as Loki’s face spits into the widest, most honest smile she’s ever seen on the other woman. Her chest aches, suddenly and there’s a fuzziness in her mouth that has nothing to do with her hangover and everything to do with stupid, arbitrary, irrational hope.

It has a taste, that damn hope. 

“Exactly,” Loki says, satisfied. “Almonds.”

+

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumble with me.](wordsformurder.tumblr.com)


End file.
